


What's What

by seeminglyincurablesentimentality (myinnerchildisbored)



Series: Rose Shelby vs. All the Bastards [12]
Category: Peaky Blinders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-19 16:42:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19136638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myinnerchildisbored/pseuds/seeminglyincurablesentimentality
Summary: In the first weeks after coming home, neither Tommy nor Rose are entirely sure what's what.





	What's What

**Author's Note:**

> This is an attempt at Tommy's POV and I'm not entirely sure about how well it's worked. It might have turned out a bit too sweet. Ready your toothbrushes...especially you, AniRay.

 

 

 

She was outside with one of her little mates, not Alice, the other little girl, the one with the hair. A minute or so earlier, she’d come into the front room to appropriate an empty basket; she’d watched him out of the corner of her eye, waiting to see if he’d say anything. He’d pretended not to notice and stayed behind a paper he’d no intention of reading until he’d heard the back door click shut.

“What’ll it be today, Missis Shelby?”

They were just under the window.

“A-hundred rashers and three boxes of bullets, please, Missis Jones.”

He nearly bit his cigarette in half; it made him want to open the window wider so he could hear them better.

“Ah, Rosie,” young Missis Jones sighed. “You’ve to do it properly.”

“I am.”

“You’re not. Look, I’ll show you. You be the shop-lady.”

“Orright…”

Even though he couldn’t see her, he knew she was rolling her eyes. She couldn’t actually do it, she was still working out the mechanics; it was more of a wide-eyed lolling of the head.

“Mornin’, Missis Shelby.”

“Mornin’, Missis Jones. What’ll it be today?” Rose answered obediently.

“A dozen eggs and two cobbs, if you have them.”

“I don’t, sorry.”

“Just the eggs?”

“No eggs.”

“D’you have any ham?”

“No.”

“Cheese?”

“No.”

She was messing with her, baiting her little friend, setting her up. It struck Tommy as quite a complicated thing to do for such a young child, but she was doing it, on purpose, there was no question about it.

“D’you have anything?”

“Bullets,” Rose said evenly. “And bacon.”

“Ah, Rosie!”

“What?”

“That’s no proper shop-“

“It’s my shop,” Rose interrupted. “I can sell what I like.”

The tone on her, it was ridiculous. She sounded like every hard-woman peddling wares from a decrepit corner table. He found himself grinning like a madman.

“They don’t sell bullets at the shops, Rosie,” her mate groaned.

“Yea, they do.”

“They do not.”

“They do,” Rose insisted. “Our Tommy said.”

A jolt went through him at this. _Our Tommy_. She’d forgotten again. They kept reminding her, Pol and Ada and Finn even, but it went in one ear and out the other, by the sounds of it.

“He didn’t.” Rose’s mate outside was clearly not convinced.

“Yea.” He imagined her nodding her head like she was riding a horse and cart down a rough road. “He said they’d to go up to a counter and get their bullets for the fighting. Shops have counters, so there.”

Tommy could feel himself smiling again. He’d told her about this a few nights ago, the first time Pol had refused to take Rose up to bed.

“You’re in, aren’t you?” she’d challenged him from the other side of the room, pulling on her coat even though she’d no need to go out, just to beat him to it before he could make a run for it. “It’s no wonder she can’t work out who you are, Thomas.”

“She’ll only ask for you if you leave now,” he’d pointed out. “And she’s been told who I am, over and over by all of us, there’s not much more I can do.”

“I s’pose if we’d told her you were a hedgehog you’d expect her to believe that as well,” Pol had said, moving towards the door mercilessly. “You want her to know you're her father, you've got to bloody start acting like one."

He’d wanted to shout at her that, as far as he knew, acting like a father meant he should be off to the pub and back just in time to conjure up irrational reasons to dole out a beating; but Pol had slammed the door before he’d had a chance. She’d not have gone for it at any rate, Pol, she’d never been one to eat up even the smallest serving of shite.

And she was right, of course.

Tommy wasn’t sure what he’d expected from his daughter upon his return, it was possible that there hadn’t been any concrete expectations at all, but he hadn’t reckoned on her complete lack of comprehension.

It wasn’t that she disliked him, she didn’t seem to, anyway; she didn’t avoid him, she wasn’t afraid, it wasn’t anything like that. On the contrary, Rose was always near, appearing out of nowhere as soon as he stepped into the house…as soon as he set foot in Watery Lane, really, if he was honest. She wasn’t allowed to leave their street, not on her own, not yet; if she had been, he’d probably found her sitting and staring at him wherever he went. And she wasn’t shy when it came to talking with him, she hammered him with questions constantly; strange questions, the kind that made him wonder what on earth was going on inside her small, tightly wound self.

“Where’s Pol?”

Rose was on the bottom step, dressed in an enormous nightdress and woolen socks. The nights were freezing still.

“Out,” he said.

“Out where?”

“Dunno.”

He pushed himself out of his seat, steeling himself. It was stupid, but he’d no idea what to do with her. When he’d left, she’d been a bundle of nothing, happy to be carried around, looking at the world from the safety of his arms; no questions, no words at all, really, and certainly not the skeptical stare he was on the receiving end of now.

“Come on then,” he said. “Let’s get you in bed, eh?”

She frowned, looking towards the door uncertainly, waiting for Pol to make an entrance no doubt. It occurred to Tommy that perhaps he should take her hand or pick her up even, but it felt as if he’d be too chummy with a stranger if he did…like a pissed bloke leaning on the fella next to him at the pub.

“Upstairs,” he said. “It’s late.”

Very, very, very slowly, Rose turned and walked up the stairs. On of her socks snagged on a nail sticking out and came off. She stopped and looked at it, then up at him, then back to the sock.

“It’s trapped,” she announced.

“Will I set it free?”

“Careful but,” she said. “Polly’ll smack you if you rip it. She might.”

She sounded so serious, giving the newcomer to the house good advice. He bent down and got the sock unstuck without damage.

“Well done.”

Tommy half-expected her to reach out and pat him on the head. Instead, she held out her hand and took the sock off him. She didn’t put it back on until she’d walked all the way to her room and was sitting on her bed.

“Where’s Finn?” she asked.

“He’s out with Arthur and John,” Tommy said.

“Why’s he allowed out?” Rose crossed her arms and stared up at him accusingly.

“He’s bigger than you.”

“So are you,” she pointed out. “And Pol made you stay in.”

“Ah…“ Tommy didn’t know where to start.

“D’you have to go to sleep as well?” Rose asked.

“No, Rosie.” He sat down on the bed next to her. “When you’re in bed, I’ll go back down.”

“To France?”

It seemed ridiculous that she could remember where he’d been but not who he was.

“No, just down the shop.”

“Are _you_ putting _me_ to bed?” She sounded properly incredulous.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

 “Because it’s late.”

“But-“

“Just get in bed, orright?”

Rose pulled back the covers and shimmied underneath, eyeballing him the entire time. He was nearly there, the mission practically accomplished, surely. For a moment an image of a father kissing a child’s forehead reared up somewhere in the deepest depth of Tommy’s memory, it’d been a drawing in some sort of picture book…not his own, theirs had been a house without books, maybe he'd seen it in school…it didn’t matter. He’d do no such thing, he’d give her the wrong idea.

“Good night, Rosie.”

Tommy waited; but so did Rose, staring up at him with an increasingly unimpressed expression.

“What?” he asked.

“If you’re putting me to bed, you’ve to tell a story.”

“About what?”

“France.”

She didn’t even have to think about it, it was like she’d been waiting for him to ask. It felt a bit like she’d trapped him, outsmarted him somehow. Tommy couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“When you were a mole-“

“Ah, remember, Rosie?” he interrupted before she could go off the deep end. “I weren’t a mole, not a real one.”

“Orright,” she groaned, eyes wide open, head rolling back. “When you were a person in a tunnel in the ground, did you make your guns out of dirt?”

“No.”

“What’d you make them out of then?”

And so he’d told her. He’d told her about the ammunition stores and the standard issue equipment and that you’d to be onto it if you wanted to get in before all the good stuff was gone. She’d listened with rapt attention and when he said ‘good night’ the second time, she’d given him a nod and rolled over. It hadn’t quite been a storybook scene, he’d thought to himself as he poured himself a drink downstairs, but it hadn’t been a disaster either.

#

When Tommy was thrown up from the tunnels back into his bed, Rose was standing by the bed, looking down at him curiously.

“Is that your real face?”

His heart was going a million miles an hour as it was and her eerie stillness wasn’t doing anything to calm it. There was a last bit of moonlight coming in through the open curtain and it made her blue and ghostly.

“What?”

He forced himself up, leaned back against the headboard, reached for the cigarettes and realised the pipe and tin and lamp were out still. Fucking marvelous.

“Is that your real face?” Rose repeated.

It made a man feel like a bug under a magnifying glass, like she was just taking a good look before she’d start plucking his legs out one by one. He ran a hand over his face, his real face. When he looked over at Rose again, she was still staring at him, her head a tilted a little to the side.

“What else would it be?” he asked.

“Dunno,” Rose shrugged.

It was fucking maddening. How could a child be smart enough to up with a question like this, yet have no idea where the question had come from?

“Why d’you ask?”

“ ‘cause it’s like my face.” There was something accusatory in her tone now. “How can your face be like my face?”

“What d’you reckon, Rose?” It was hard to keep the annoyance out of his voice, impossible, really.

“Dunno.”

“D’you remember who I am?” Tommy asked.

“Yea, I remember.”

“You do?”

“Yea, ‘course I do.”

She was blinking and trying not to, she’d no clue. She was trying to make it up as she went, buying time by pretending a real answer was beneath her somehow. Quite clever, he thought.

“Who am I then?”

It was cruel, maybe, to play with her like this; but it was better than shouting at her to get it through her thick head that he was her father.

“You’re me as a man.”

John’s young ones weren’t doing any of this, Tommy was certain, even though the oldest only had a year or so on Rosie. If there’d been any confusion or strangeness or outright bizarre behaviour, John had not mentioned it.

“Is that right?” Rose was chewing her lip, looking at him almost nervously now. “Or…”

“Or what?” he asked.

“Or am I you as a girl?”

Nothing about this was right. Rose shouldn’t have to work this hard to figure out who he was; just like Tommy shouldn’t have to start getting to know her when she was already so very many things. It was what it was though.

“Have you thought about this a lot, Rosie?”

She nodded.

“Are we the same?” she asked after a moment or two.

“We’re kin,” Tommy said slowly. “So, we’re a bit the same.”

“Is kin the same as family?”

“It is.”

Rose sighed, weary as an old woman. It made Tommy feel beyond useless.

“Who was here first?” Her voice was a bit croaky now, her eyes a bit shiny, like she was trying very hard not to cry.

That was something, at least, that she’d already understood that tears didn’t solve a thing. It was a bit depressing, too, if he was honest.

“You or me, you mean?”

“Yea…”

“Me.”

“But then…” Rose ground her fists into her eyes furiously. It seemed wrong to be lying down, watching her wrestle with the enormity of it all.

Tommy swung his legs out of bed and sat on the edge. He nodded for Rose to sit beside him and, after a moment of lip-chewing deliberation, she did.

“I can’t remember,” she said. “I can’t remember you at all. It’s thick.”

“It’s not,” Tommy said. “You were only a baby, Rosie, no one can remember anything from when they were a baby.”

“Do you remember me?”

“I do,” he said carefully. “But you’re very different now.”

“How?”

“You can talk, for a start.” Tommy tried to smile, like this was somehow funny instead of horrible. “And walk.”

“I couldn’t do that?” There was the skeptical look again.

“You could barely sit up by yourself when I had to go away.”

“We didn’t see each other for a long time, didn’t we?”

“A long time.”

“I can climb on the roof now.”

“Is that right?” Tommy managed not to shake his head at the sharp turn the conversation had taken.

“It’s easy.”

“I used to climb on roofs as well,” he said. “Broke me arm once, falling off.”

“I never fall.” Rose smiled at him. “Almost never.”

“Good girl.”

It was lovely, sitting there having a chat with his daughter. It should have been the most normal thing in the world, Tommy knew, but they’d have to get used to each other before anything would feel normal.

“Rosie?”

“Yea?”

“D’you know how to ride a horse?”

“I’m too little…” Something passed across her face. “Amn’t I?”

“Who told you this?” he asked.

“Pol,” Rose said. “And uncle Charlie. And Finn.”

“Well,” Tommy said, “I reckon anyone big enough to climb on the roof is big enough to ride a horse.”

“For a fact?”

“For a fucking fact, Rosie.”

Her grin was like the sun rising, it was enough to chase off any bit of tunnel left in the room.

“Come on then.” Tommy got up and started pulling on his boots.

“Now?” It was a squeal, nearly, he’d never seen her this excited.

“Yea,” he said. “Now.”

#

She was fucking fearless.

The beast was huge even for him, it must have seemed like an elephant to her. Tommy would have preferred something a bit smaller – a lot smaller, actually – but there was only one horse stabled at Charlie’s and it happened to be enormous. He couldn’t very well back out now.

Rose watched closely as he swung himself up and when he held out his hand to her, she took it without a second’s hesitation. Tommy sat her in front of him, in between the reigns, and she leaned forward a bit to pat the horse’s neck.

“ _Ita_ , _bitti gras_ ,” she whispered.

“Who taught you that?”

It hadn’t occurred to him that she’d be able to speak any Romani at all, it was hard enough to wrap his head ‘round her speaking English.

“Polly,” Rose said without turning around. “Can we go riding now?”

Tommy clicked his tongue and off they went, out of the shipyard and down the street. It was early, barely light, the street was mostly deserted. Rose seemed perfectly comfortable, her hands braced on either side of the horse’s neck, moving in time with it without being told to do so.

“ _Hand_?” he asked.

She look over her shoulder and up at him, her cheeks reddening in the cold morning air, grinning, keen as anything.

“ _Arvalie_ ,” she said.

Tommy tapped his heels into the beasts flanks and it obliged gladly, as happy to be out as its passengers. A moment later they were hammering along, the street beneath them blurring until it looked like a river. Rose was leaning forward now, her knees up and out of the way of the pumping top joints, clinging onto the beast like a jockey, like she’d done it every day of her life.

A sound Tommy’d not heard before floated over the hoofbeats and the whipping wind; it took him a moment to catch on that it was Rosie laughing. His daughter, first time on horseback, laughing her head off. It was good enough to make a man think that maybe you could have a soldier’s minute, the kind when everything else ceased to matter, without a battle raging ‘round you.

They rounded a corner and there, right in front of them, was a bloody cart with a knacker gasping in front of it. Tommy tore into the reigns and the beast reared up; for a terrifying moment Rose was above him, her fall inevitable. Somehow, impossibly, she clung on. Her feet were on his legs and her fingers clawed into the horse’s mane, it left her half-lying, half-hanging in front of him when they went back down, but she didn’t come off.

Tommy slipped his arm round her waist and they slid to the ground together.

“Stand back a bit,” he said, but Rose was already heading out of the way.

It took a bit until the beast was calm; and when Tommy turned to look for his daughter, he found her watching him with complete concentration.

“Did you hurt her mouth?” she asked.

“She’s orright,” Tommy said.

“Can I come back?”

“Yea, you can.”

Rose came over slowly until she stood right next to him. She looked up at the horse, checking whether he was telling the truth.

“Poor horsey,” she cooed and reached up to touch its face; she was much too short, even on tiptoe.

Tommy lifted her up without thinking and Rose gently stroked the horse’s nose. She was careful, but she didn’t seem scared at all.

“Can I go back on?”

She’d nearly been thrown off and there she was asking – bloody asking – to have another go. Tommy wasn’t sure whether one body was big enough to contain this much pride. It didn’t seem decent.

“ ‘course, Rosie.”

“On me own?”

It seemed the worst possible idea.

“Yea, orright,” Tommy heard himself say. “I’ll lead her though.”

His daughter gave a disappointed groan as she attempted to roll her eyes and looked so demented it made Tommy laugh out loud.

“Come on…” He lifted her higher and she swung a leg over. “Hold on, eh?”

By the time they walked up to the shipyard the sun was up and the streets were alive. Tommy was barely holding onto the reigns now, the horse knew the way and seemed happy enough to go home.

“Rosie?”

“Yea?”

She was sitting beautifully, back straight, shoulders relaxed. Tommy slung the reigns back over the horse’s head.

“Between your fingers,” he said, taking Rose’s hand and threading the reign through it. “Like that. If she gets too fast, you pull back. Gently.”

They were no distance at all from the entrance to the shipyard, she’d ride in easy; she’d have to do nothing at all, really.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.” Rose sounded a little breathless.

“Orright, you take her home.” He said it to the horse as much as to the girl.

Tommy let go of the reigns and for a moment Rose and the horse were motionless as a statue. Then, in a near perfect imitation of himself, Rose clicked her tongue and the beast lumbered onwards. Tommy let them go, he didn’t follow until she’d ridden through the gates of the yard and out of sight towards the stable.

He lit a cigarette before he started walking after them; he didn’t want to seem like he was rushing, he wanted her to know that he was sure she’d manage.

By the time he rounded the corner to the stable, however, Rose had been intercepted.

“Get down, Rosie. Now.” Charlie was holding the horse by the mane, as Rose was apparently unwilling to hand over the reigns.

“Get off, I’m allowed!” She was pulling her legs up, out of Charlie’s reach.

“You certainly are not-“ Charlie started.

“If you can climb the roof, you can ride a horse,” Rose interrupted.

“Says who?”

“Me dad.”

“Indeed? And where’s he?”

“Dunno…there somewhere…”

Tommy was stuck at the corner, the cigarette burning out between his fingers, wishing for time to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Ita, bitti gras - Hey, little horse  
> Hand - faster  
> Arvalie - yes


End file.
